I was writing a review for the Great Courses, “Archaeology: An Introduction to the World’s Greatest Sites” and I had an exciting insight for me.
For some reason I’ve always loved reading about Archaeology. I’ve never really known why. One time I was talking to my Dad about something concerning archaeology that I’d recently read about. Suddenly my Dad said that Archaeology was bunk, and it was stupid to pay people to do it! I was shocked. And the most shocking thing was that I didn’t have a good argument for why I thought it was important.
I wrote about that in the review, and I ended by saying that even though I didn’t have an argument I still felt it was important. As I was a writing that I remembered an article that I’d read some time ago. All I remember was that the author said that countries in the “Western World” had a heritage, and part of that heritage is that we decided that we wanted to dig things up, not to loot them which has gone on forever, but to study them. The author said that Egyptians could have dug up the Rosetta Stone and studied it for 1500 years and never did. The Greeks could have removed and kept safe wonderful sculptures and preserved them, but the didn’t. Lord Elgin and the British Museum did. Now the countries are trying to get back their “heritage”, but I think the want it back only to make money off of it. If Lord Elgin had not acted the Elgin Marbles would look like the marbles that he left. If that French soldier had not dug up the Rosetta Stone and saw that it had writing on it and might be important, and Egyptian probably would have dug it up and used it in a wall.
The thing is that this love of Archaeology started right around 1800 when Napoleon took a lot of natural philosophers (that’s what scientists were called in 1800), artists, and other experts with him to Egypt. When they got back to Europe and started sharing their findings Europe went through a craze for all things Egyptian. In America people like Thomas Jefferson was supporting Archaeology efforts at the same time for Native Americans. And Archaeology just kept going there.
Now for a long time I’ve thought that the French Revolution was the event that the Lord used to give Europe as much freedom as Europe could stand.
Here’s what the Lord said about our miraculous Constitution.
5 And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.
Monarchies (or the influence of Satan) were much more established in Europe and the fight for freedom was much bloodier in Europe than in America. Napoleon was part of the spreading of freedoms that we take for granted today like the “Separation of Church and State”.
We know that the American Revolution was part of the Restoration. I think the French Revolution was as well. And I think that this fascination with Archaeology was part of the Spirit of Elijah or the “turning of the hearts of the children to the fathers”. And now I can finally answer my father about why I feel Archaeology is important.
